Reagan Questioned Ballet Dancer Son’s Sexuality

Ronald Reagan apparently had concerns that his son, Ron, was gay after he dropped out of Yale University in 1976 to follow his dreams of becoming a ballet dancer, the New York Post’s Page Six reports.

Christopher Buckley, the son of novelist William F. Buckley, talked about President Reagan’s concerns in an interview with playwright John Guare, which was published in the Lincoln Center Theater program for the play "The City of Conversation."

"My father and Reagan were close, and my dad had always acted as a kind of godfather to the Reagan children, so Reagan called up my dad and expressed to him his worry that this meant that his son played for the other team," Christopher said. "My dad ventured the opinion that all people in the arts might not be gay, but there wasn’t much he could really say about this, and, of course, we now know Ron’s not gay."

Reagan’s son dropped out of Yale after just one semester and joined the Joffrey Ballet to pursue his dream of dancing.

"It is widely known that Ron’s parents have not managed to see a single ballet performance of their son, who is clearly very good, having been selected to the Joffrey second company, and is their son nonetheless. Ron talks of his parents with much affection. But these absences are strange and go back a ways," Time magazine wrote in 1980, according to Wikipedia.

The president, and his wife Nancy Reagan, did not see him perform at the Met.

As Gay Star News points out, Ron Reagan is not gay but had many differences with his father. Reagan Jr. is a liberal atheist (he spoke at the 2014 Democratic National Convention) and took issues with Republican presidents, like George W. Bush.

He currently lives in Seattle with his wife Doria, a clinical psychologist whom he married in 1980.

President Ronald Reagan signed an executive order that extended the power of U.S. intelligence agencies overseas, allowing broader surveillance of non-U.S. suspects. No one imagined he was granting authority to spy on what became known as Silicon Valley.